The Present
by partypantscuddy
Summary: My Christmas present for my dear friend bamf-gonagall.  -


_Merry Christmas Cassidy. xoxo - Syd_

* * *

><p>"What's wrong Cuddles?" He asked as he studied her closely. He had been focused on her even more than usual these last few days. He could tell that there was something bothering her and she wasn't going to tell him unless he asked. He hadn't planned on asking her, but he had noticed that the closer they got to Christmas, the more her mood had begun to decline. He had never noticed it before they were together; perhaps it was because they were together now that he noticed it. Maybe it ws something that she managed to shut away while she was at work and let it out when she was alone. What ever it was, it was something he needed to know about.<p>

"Nothing... I'm fine." She said softly, as she made her way to stand from her place beside him.

House rolled his eyes as he grabbed her by the wrist, gently pulling her back down beside him. He wrapped his arm around her waist, pining her to his side.

"Don't lie to me. I've seen your mood change over the past few days. Obviously, something is wrrong. Don't deflect, that's my job. Just tell me what's bothering you now, or I'll keep harassing you until you tell me. Which is easier for us both? Waiting or telling me now?"

He was met with silence. He waited a seconds before trying it again.

"Come on Cuddy, just tell me what's wrong..." He said it softly this time, hoping that if he changed his tone it would make it easier for her to tell him.

She sighed sadly burying herself into his side. Whatever was bothering her, he knew that it was something that was difficult for her to bring up.

"The holidays upset me. Christmases were my dad and I's thing when he was still around. Even if we were Jews, we still celebrated it. It was a family thing, but it was special for me. I would help him with the tree and when I was little he would put me up on his shoulders so I could put the star on the tree. It was just our thing. I got older and went to college, moved out, became Dean, but I would always visit my parents during the holidays and we would always trim the tree together. Then he died, and it was just..."

House rubbed her arm before pulling her closer to him. He had always known that she had been a Daddy's girl, but he had honestly never thought about how she reacted to things that reminded her of him.

He suddenly rememebered how earlier in the year he had cut up the last copy of a picture her father had taken and he honestly felt terrible. He ran his fingers through her hair, knowing that if he were to somehow find a copy of that picture for her that it would at least make her feel a bit better. He held her for several minutes afterwards until he knew she was okay.

Later that night when she went to bed, he called her mother.

* * *

><p>"If Cuddy asks you where I am, I need you to lie to her."<p>

"Why?" Wilson asked raising an eyebrow.

"Don't ask. Just do it." House replied shutting the door behind him.

"No. I'm not lying to her without a reason. Where are you going?"

"You lie to her all the time. Don't worry about it. Just tell her you don't know where I am, which isn't a lie, because you don't know where I'm going."

With that House exited Wilson's office, no longer having any intention on sticking around.

The drive up to Arlene Cuddy's house took over an hour. He was greated at the door by the elder woman whom he had called up the previous night and informed of his hunt for the picture. He was not at all surprised when she had so quickly agreed, seeing has he had convinced her to ship Cuddy's old med school desk to him in Princeton so he could put it in her new office to surprise her a few years back. She obviously knew that he had her daughter's best interest at heart.

"You know, Cuddles and you don't really look alike." He said as Arlene lead him into the living room.

"That's not the first time I've heard that. Lisa takes after her father, the hair, the eyes. Her sister Julia takes after me."

"Interesting."

"If you say so. You might wanna sit, if you're going to look for that picture, you've got tons of boxes to shift through." She replied gesturing to a pile of boxes in the middle of the room.

"There are ten or so photo albums, and if it's not in there, there are a bunch of negatives in the boxes. I hope my daughter knows what you're worth if you're going to this much trouble to find a picture for her."

"Yeah well, it's my fault the picture's gone."

"I know, she told me about it. She asked me to find her a copy, but I didn't feel like it. I had better things to do. If she wanted the picture so badly she could have come look for it herself."

"She's got a pretty busy life."

"Ha. She doesn't need to work as much as she does. That's the reason she's never settled down, still unmarried, a parade of men coming through her door to screw up that kid of her's childhood more than it's already being screwed up."

House had to bite his tongue in order to not respond with something that screw him over. He needed to find that picture for Cuddy and bad mouthing her mother was not a way to do it. He ignored Arlene's never ending jabbering and set to work looking through the pictures.

Two hours later he had gone through all of the photo albums to no avail. He sighed, realizing how expensive it was going to be to get all of the negatives developed.

"She better be thankful for this." He murmured under his breath as he put the the last of the boxes into trunk of his car. In total there were three boxes, each one containing enough negatives for over three hundred pictures, a grand total of nine hundred in all.

He stopped at Walgreens on his way back to Cuddy',s dropping off the boxes and being informed that it would take two days to get all of the negatives developed. It was half past ten when he finally pulled up into her driveway.

"Where have you been?" He heard her ask the second he opened the door. He was surprised to find her in the living room at this time. She was usually in bed by now either asleep or reading. He noted the pile of folders on the coffee table realizing that was the cause of her being out of bed.

"Running an errand." He replied, preventing her by questioning him any further by dropping down beside her and hooking an arm around her waist before kissing her.

"I didn't run into you all day... I missed you." She said softly, caressing his cheek with her thumb.

"Good to know you can't live without me." He teased.

"Shut up." She replied smacking him lightly on the chest.

* * *

><p>Cuddy leaned into House as she watched Rachel unwrap the present he had gotten her.<p>

"I told you that you didn't have to get her, or me anything." She said softly, smiling as Rachel let out an excited squeal at her present. It was a miniature Grand Piano. She was not at all surprised that House would get her daughter something of the sort seeing as the times they had spent at his place so far involved House playing something with an oddly attentive Rachel sitting beside him on the bench and watching as he played.

"When have I ever listened to you?" He replied wrapping an arm around her as she let out a soft laugh.

"You have a point there. Now, where's this amazing present you have for me?"

"Jeez, you didn't want a present, and now you can't wait until I give it to you?"

"Shut up."

She honestly hadn't cared if he had gotten her a present or not, but he had bren hinting for several days that she was going to adore her Christmas and it had made her curious. Now that the day had come, she was excited to finally know what he had gotten her.

She felt him let go of her waist and watched as he stood from the couch and exited the room. He returned several minutes later, her present in hand.

"Here." He said dropping it into her lap before resuming his spot beside her.

She looked down at the rectangular package before looking for one of the taped edges and opening it with ease.

"Why can't you be like a normal person and rip it open?" She heard House groan from beside her.

"Because normal, isn't normal." She replied sliding the wrapping paper off of her gift.

She opened the black rectangular box, finding in it several sheets of tissue paper.

"What the hell House?"

"Keep digging through the tissue paper, you'll find it."

She rolled her eyes, pulling out what seemed like twenty sheets of paper before finding herself face to face with the back of a picture frame. She pulled it out, turning it towards her face as she did so.

The picture inside of it nearly made her drop the frame. She let out a small gasp as she ran her fingers over it.

It was the last picture her father had ever taken of her. It was the same picture that House had defaced earlier in the year. She had honestly thought that it was lost for good, seeing as she hadn't had a digital copy of it and had lost the negatives from the camera. Yet somehow, the same picture was now staring her in the face.

"When you told me about your dad and Christmas, it made me feel like total dick for cutting up that picture. I didn't realize how much anything that connected you to him meant to you. So I called up your mom and spent a few hours at her place going through boxes of pictures."

She nodded, remembering how a week or so ago he had disappeared for the entire day and she had had no idea of where he had gone.

"I didn't find it there, but she had a few boxes full of negatives, so I took those and had them developed. The other night when I went back to my place instead of here was when I spent the night looking through the developed pictures for it. There are extra copies in the box, they're in an envelope."

She reached back into the box, pulling out a white envelope with at least ten copies of the picture.

She sat stunned at all the trouble he had gone through in order to make it up to her. House hardly showed his romantic and caring side but when he did, it made her remember why she had fallen in love with him in the first place. He was always doing the unexpected, never making a day boring.

"I can't believe you went through all of that trouble just to make it up to me..." She said softly wiping at her eyes. She hadn't even realized that they had welled with tears.

"Yeah, well I'm not as big as a jerk as I seem."

"Thank you House... I mean really, thank you. This is the best present I have ever gotten..."

"You're welcome." He replied as his arm resumed it's previous place around her shoulders. She leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes as she felt him kiss the top of her head.

It was the best Christmas she had had in the last fifteen years, and she was thankful that House was the reason behind it.


End file.
